


anomalous observations

by justjoy



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: (parentheses abuse), Carlos attempts to cope with the scientific anomaly that is Night Vale, M/M, POV Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), also the sheer number of coincidences is starting to get suspicious, and Cecil in general, okay I'll stop tagging now I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy/pseuds/justjoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things change over time, some things don't, and Carlos is still not a big fan of the radio.</p>
            </blockquote>





	anomalous observations

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have some more Carlos!POV, because, hey, anything that gives me good reason to write about science and/or scientists is fair game.
> 
> Also, this fic mainly exists due to the wonderful response I got on my other (much, _much_ shorter) works, so consider this dedicated to y'all awesome readers out there.

Carlos isn't a big fan of the radio.

Mostly, he works in silence, with nothing to disrupt the constant buzz of his thoughts - the only sound in his lab is usually the steady, muted whirr of equipment, now punctuated at irregular intervals by the occasional outburst of noise that seems to be an integral part of life in Night Vale. He listens to the odd bit of classical while waiting for results, or just when he's in the mood, but never the radio. The mindless chatter that most stations offer isn't a distraction Carlos particularly cares for.

So it isn't until one week and a half after he moves in that Carlos finds out the reason for all the pointed attention and sidelong glances he's been getting.

He'd intially chalked it up to the xenophobia one might expect of a small-town community like this, but the explanation hadn't sat quite right, because the residents of Night Vale weren't the slightest bit wary of him - to the contrary, they seemed _fascinated_.

(Some distant, unscientific part of his mind had put this together with the observation that paranormal happenings in Night Vale, if not immediately fatal, were regarded with the same sort of fascination, and come up with the tentative hypothesis that Carlos should really be more worried about this.)

 

He's standing in the checkout line at the Ralph's, going through his mental list of groceries, when he catches the sound of his name.

It's unlikely to be a mistake - he was the only Carlos in the whole of Night Vale the last time he'd checked - but Carlos honestly has no idea who it could be, since he barely knows anyone in this town aside from his lab assistants. (Or, well, the four lab assistants he has left of the original seven, half of whom will no doubt be gone by the end of the week if one extrapolates from the current trend. Carlos supposes that he should be grateful that they are leaving of their own volition, that Night Vale does nothing worse then unnerve them. They've only had one casualty, and he doesn't intend to let that number rise any further.)

He hears his name two more times before pinpointing the source as the speakers in the store, currently broadcasting _Welcome to Night Vale_ according to the large screen situated above them. It takes a while to connect the disembodied voice, slightly distorted by the speakers, with the man Carlos vaguely remembers from when he'd gone to the station building in an attempt to figure out why his Geiger counter had gone mad.

That same man, Carlos is now belatedly realising, who is a broadcaster on the station, and is obsessed with him.

He pays for his purchases quickly and hurries back to his car, remembering to stay far from the gaping hole in the lot, but by the time he manages to find Night Vale Community Radio (a process involving much frustrated jabbing at random buttons on his car console, marked either in indecipherable runes or not at all) he's just in time to hear the broadcaster say _and now, the weather._

It takes Carlos a few seconds to make some sense of what follows - or, more accurately, _attempt_ to make sense of what he hears next.

He gives what he presumes to be the car radio a long, hard stare, because with the abnormally high levels of... well, _abnormality_ that is this town he really shouldn't have expected the community radio to be anything approaching normal either. Of _course_.

 _Which_ , notes some other part of his mind, in a tone of clinical detachment tinged by the slightest hint of hysteria, _does not explain why there is_ music _playing during the weather._

The song draws to a close while Carlos is still failing to suspend his disbelief, and he listens, transfixed by an odd mixture of fascinated horror and complete mortification as the broadcaster - whose name he has not yet heard - waxes lyrical about his _perfect_  hair and teeth.

(Somewhere around this point, his mind blanks out and absolutely refuses to listen any further. His coping mechanisms, apparently, have not developed adequately to deal with community-radio-broadcasters-turned-stalkers.)

The broadcast ends with that voice announcing the Unsymphonious Orchestra before bidding his listeners _good night_ , and it is only two minutes of indeterminately discordant noise later that Carlos reaches over to shut the radio off, and drives back to the lab.

 

* * *

  

He listens to _Welcome to Night Vale_ every day after that, and learns several things.

For starters, the broadcaster's name is Cecil. Apparently, Cecil does report on more than just Carlos, covering the community calendar and some surprisingly helpful bits of news about local happenings, although he does spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about Carlos.

(He doesn't even want to _think_ about traffic or financial news, because those segments of the show somehow manage to make even _less_ sense than the weather, if such a thing is even possible.

Also, his reaction to being praised quite constantly and adoringly over a very public community radio broadcast appears to be a resigned sort of bemusement, when he finally goes from feeling completely mortified to merely being mortified to a considerable extent.)

 

At first, Carlos convinces himself that he's just listening to gather the necessary information on Night Vale and its residents, since what little research he's already done indicates that the rest of it will take quite a while longer. He is still an outsider to this town, after all - soon to be the only one left, because Carlos can tell that the remaining pair of assistants are nearing the end of their tether, and he can't even bring himself to blame them for it.

Even that excuse gets old when he finds himself shaking his head or laughing outright at the broadcast before much longer, muttering _you jerk_ before Cecil can finish saying _Steve Carlsberg_. He already knows the important residents of Night Vale better than he did the neighbours back in his old town, even though he hasn't even met half of them in person before.

Carlos doesn't quite know what to think about that.

 

* * *

 

After the next assistant leaves, he decides to build a radio.

Even the amount of field work he's found himself doing does not justify the sheer amount of time spent in his car recently - he'd just managed to stop himself from bringing his reports into the car to finish yesterday evening - and Carlos tells himself that having a side project to work on will help take his mind off the impossible multitudes of anomalies his research hasn't stopped turning up. There's more than enough space in the lab to spare, after all.

Of course, this being Night Vale, things are generally easier said than done.

It isn't immediately obvious to the casual observer, but the town does fuction on its own rules of logic, which can be approximated by taking everything taken for granted elsewhere and turning it on its head. Even with everything he's figured out so far it still takes Carlos about eleven tries before he manages to fashion a working receiver, because the reception in Night Vale is like nothing he's ever seen before. 

By this point, of course, Carlos has given up on expecting the situation to be any different, so it merely warrants several huffs of frustration in the general direction of the station building (all while carefully denying the truly unsettling implications of the fact that he actually remembers which direction that even _is_ ) as he takes everything apart for the seventh time and starts over.

It's probably childish of him, but Carlos steadfastly refuses to go out and buy a radio, because he just _knows_ that Cecil will find out sooner or later - sooner rather than later, probably - and he will never hear the end of that.

 

* * *

  

Carlos doesn't actually meet Cecil again until a month after he first arrives, and it isn't just because there aren't any more assistants left to serve as human shields and report the newest disasters on his behalf, although it  _is_ certainly an important reason. More importantly, though, his curiousity to find out what Cecil is really like on the other side of the microphone has finally won over whatever remaining trepidation he still harbours about the meeting.

Rationally speaking, he can't avoid running into Cecil forever, after all, not in a town of this size.

(Although given that this is the same curiousity that drove him first to become a scientist, then here to Night Vale, right in the path of daily life-threatening dangers and the occasional reality-destroying hazard, Carlos finds it somewhat debatable that curiosity really is the foremost virtue of scientific enquiry as commonly touted, but that is an argument for another day.)

So Carlos finds himself parking his car at a safe distance from the station building and triple checking the ground for any hidden slowsand mines before getting out, all while cursing his ex-assistants for refusing to even get Cecil's number for him, the hopeless giggling romantics. 

 

It figures, of course, that the one day he doesn't listen to the broadcast - radio safely tucked far away in another room, hooked up to a recording system for later listening because silence is of absolute necessity for his latest experiment - is the day that all hell breaks loose.

Much of what follows is a fragmented chain of recollection in his usually reliable memory. Carlos remembers the burst of despairing sorrow that overwhelms him the moment he steps within three feet of the building, terror that paralyses him for long, unending seconds; his instincts just beginning to scream  _run_  when a man does indeed run from the building, slamming the door behind him closed with a bang that is far louder than it should be before collapsing against it.

After that, Carlos only recalls, bizarrely enough, a sudden appreciation for the constant surveillance by the Sheriff's Secret Police, then he somehow winds back up in his lab with a radio broadcaster he barely even knows, rendered mostly unconscious and visibly trembling by the telepathic projection from Station Management.

(In his mind, this will always be That Incident with the Station Management, capital letters included, along with neon lettering and alarms where appropriate. Cecil actually has the alacrity to giggle when he finds out a couple months later, the daft, completely berserk idiot with absolutely _no sense of self-presevation, are you even listening to me Cecil?_ )

 

* * *

  

It doesn't ever occur to Carlos that Cecil might just be faking his admiration, not really. Sure, he'd found it downright alarming at first, and even now he still isn't quite sure what to make of it, but the praise never fails to strike him as completely sincere; Cecil just has an odd way of expressing it. (Then again, it _is_ perfectly possible that public shows of sentiment might just be a perfectly normal and accepted notion here in Night Vale. His sliding scale of normalcy has long since taken on the rough appearance of a Mobius strip, and it doesn't seem like the type of thing that he can just go and ask anyone about.)

Between a broadcaster and a scientist, one might ordinarily expect things to progress at a somewhat reasonable pace, if for no reason other than simple practicality.

( _I'm not calling for personal reasons_ , Carlos vaguely remembers blurting when he first calls Cecil several weeks later, and he wants very badly to  _slap_ himself for it.)

 

...well, apparently not.

 

* * *

  

 _I just wanted to see you_ , Carlos says when Cecil finally - _finally_ \- arrives at the Arby's, and they are the most honest, sincere words he's said in the one year he's been here. His whole life, even.

Cecil looks surprised in the light of the setting sun, and so is Carlos, because he hadn't been intending to say that at all.

(Then again, very little of his life is going as intended anyway, so this little bit more shouldn't make a difference - except, of course, that it does.)

 

His notes on the miniature city under lane five of the bowling alley are still scattered across the bench when he gets back to the lab. He gathers them up in a neat pile and remarks to the room in general that they might be useful in defending Night Vale, or something to that effect; Carlos is too distracted to remember the actual words. Whoever's watching him probably will, though, and that's what matters.

That done, he returns his usual stool, hands folded awkwardly in his lap without the pockets of a lab coat to contain them, and it strikes him then how _quiet_ everything is, how utterly still the air is around him. It isn't a earth-shattering revelation, just the undeniable weight of one truth he's been refusing to acknowledge ever since the first few weeks he'd spent in Night Vale.

This isn't a new development, of course. Carlos has always been smart, intelligent enough to set him apart from the rest of the population, but even among scientists he is unconventional, too honest to play by the rules of the scientific community, too tactless to fit in anywhere else. Being in Night Vale has just forced him to confront it, manifested the hard truth in the form of a far-too-empty lab not meant for one, with space where there should have been people and absolute silence where there should have been sound.

Carlos isn't in the habit of lying to himself - he'd like to believe he isn't, at least - but even now he can't quite bring himself to admit that he is _lonely_.

 

* * *

  

("You worry too much about everything, Carlos," Cecil says the next time Carlos rushes over to warn him of the latest apocalypse scheduled to hit the station exactly this time tomorrow, whatever that might mean in Night Vale. 

"Well, you don't worry enough," Carlos retorts with no little annoyance. They've known each other for perhaps thirteen months now and survived about five times as many major, double-or-triple-digit-body-count disasters in that time, but Carlos still cannot understand how Cecil can remain so completely unfazed at serious threats to his continued existence.

Cecil grins. "You're a scientist, my dear Carlos. You do your job and I'll do mine. And speaking of which, dear listeners!" he exclaims brightly, already modulating smoothly back into his radio voice before the end of the sentence, and Carlos almost whacks himself with the iPad in his hands when he realises that the _On Air_ sign must have lit up without him noticing.

Judging from the amused glint in Cecil's eye, he had been perfectly aware of this fact all along. "Guess who joined me in the studio during the weather?")

 

* * *

  

"We've been over this, Cecil," Carlos says patiently for what feels like the eighty-seventh time, but is probably just the eighth. Or the tenth. He'd lost count somewhere around the fifth. "I am _not_ moving in with you."

"But  _Carlos!_ " Cecil's voice is quite nearly a whine.

" _No_ , Cecil." Carlos directs an annoyed look at the ceiling of Rico's for want of its actual target. He'd just called Cecil during the weather to ask which pizza he wanted for dinner, and he had no idea how they'd come to this. "Look, most of my research equipment is in the lab. And before you even suggest it, no, I am  _not_  moving them over to your place, there's no telling if anything would even survive. I haven't even replaced the  _six_  test tubes you managed to break the last time you  _dropped by the lab to see me_  - "

And then Carlos realises, quite abruptly, that the weather should have ended about eight minutes ago.

(He would know, after all, since he'd helped Cecil select it yesterday afternoon.) _  
_

"You're - " Carlos starts, then stops, _then_ scrubs a hand over his face and bangs his head against the counter a couple times just for good measure, because he really should have seen this coming from a hundred miles away. "You're  _airing_  this, aren't you. All of it."

It's barely a question, and to Cecil's credit he doesn't even bother denying it.

"Of course, my dear Carlos!" Cecil answers airily, and Carlos can just imagine the satisfied grin on his face, like the time he'd finally agreed to adopt one of Khoshekh's _aren't they just_ _completely adorable, Carlos?_ kittens after much pleading and outright emotional blackmail on Cecil's part. "You are quite enthralling when you're frustrated, you know."

Across the room, Old Woman Josie waves cheerfully at him, and a couple of people Carlos doesn't even recognise give him a thumbs-up.

Fortunately, he is saved from doing more than staring blankly at the gestures by the  _squelch_  of his wheat-free pizza landing to hover gently inches above the counter, and Carlos catches it carefully before making the most dignified exit possible without actually running away.

"This isn't frustration, I assure you," Carlos answers in a tone of complete innocence. "And Cecil? There's extra cheese on your pizza and I am holding it _hostage_."

He finds vindictive satisfaction in the distinctive sound of Cecil gulping audibly in terror before hurriedly ending the call and going back to the news.

  

Eventually, Cecil wins the argument, not that Carlos had put up much of a fight anyway.

Between the two of them, packing what few personal possessions he has scattered around the lab and moving them to Cecil's apartment takes barely an hour. The rest of the day is spent figuring out where everything should go, which mostly involves Carlos putting something down only for Cecil to move it somewhere else moments later for _aesthetic purposes_ , and inevitably ends with everything back in their original positions anyway.

They settle into something of a routine after that. Carlos still goes back to his lab to do most of his experiments, and Cecil remains busy at the radio station for many hours each day. Beyond that, they're together more often than not, the apartment somehow able to accomodate both of them quite comfortably even though they haven't bought any new furniture.

(In fact, the whole apartment seems at least somewhat sentient and psychically linked to Cecil somehow, which certainly explains how there's coffee already brewing in the morning when Carlos wakes up even though Cecil is clearly still sound asleep, or how the shower is always at exactly the right temperature even though he knows Cecil takes his showers ridiculously hot.

Cecil had explained, with genuine confusion, that such sentience was apparently something that all homes in Night Vale gained over time, furniture and applicances alike bending naturally to their owner's will. Which is probably fortunate, since Carlos isn't even sure  _where_  furnitures come from in Night Vale or where to buy any, assuming they are even available for sale. Cecil's reaction the one time he'd mentioned flatpack boxes probably nixed IKEA as an option.)

 

* * *

 

Carlos used to dream, every now and then, that Night Vale was nothing but a concoction of his own imagination, that he'd wake up one day to find that everything - Cecil, the town, even the _glow cloud_ \- had disappeared with the rise of the morning sun.

He startles awake from those dreams in a cold sweat. They are unsettling, sometimes terrifying, but the last vestiges usually vanish into nothingness with recognition of the thrumming reality that is Night Vale around him, and acknowledgement of the fact that this town is like nothing Carlos could ever concoct, not even in his wildest dreams. 

But now his dreams are different - _simpler_ , perhaps, or all the more complicated, depending on how you look at it. Carlos doesn't wake so much as he is yanked back into reality, always shaking so hard that it's a wonder that he hasn't woken Cecil up yet.

After these dreams, Carlos will lie awake until what passes for sunrise in Night Vale, until the continued rise and fall of Cecil's chest has driven away the half-remembered image of Cecil running and stumbling and  _falling_ , until the steady rhythm of Cecil's heartbeat drowns the scream of utter desperation still reverberating somewhere deep in the caverns of his mind.

(He can never recognise the voice, doesn't know if it is Cecil's or his own. Doesn't want to.)

 

* * *

  

"Do you ever miss anything?" Cecil asks one night, earnest curiousity in his features. "About, you know... the life out there?"

The Arby's parking lot is vacant save for the two of them, as always. Carlos has wondered more than once how the rest of Night Vale knows to stay away when they come here; he suspects Cecil may have something to do with it.

Familiar lights shimmer far above them, above the letters of the glowing red sign, always flickering, unpredictable yet constant in their existence, and Carlos thinks about how it isn't strange at all to hear Cecil refer to _out there_ , as if Carlos' life pre-Night Vale had been on another planet altogether. (Which, if Carlos is to be honest, is not all that far from the truth. Night Vale is about as literally out of this world as any place can get without _actually_ being situated in another dimension altogether.)

"Rain," he answers, and catches Cecil's brief wince at the the word.

Carlos can't help the brief burst of laughter that escapes as he shakes his head.

"Not like that, Cecil. Rain isn't supposed to bring eternal doom or cursed flash floods. Well, except for the rain in Night Vale, I suppose," he amends at Cecil's look of utter disbelief.

Carlos fishes out his phone and does a few quick searches for _video of rain_ , breathing a sigh of relief when the black screen of the City Council censors doesn't appear - he can survive another reminder about the proper use of the Internet, but it's still something he'd rather avoid if at all possible.

Cecil's delight as he watches the rain fall, though, is more than worth the risk.

 

* * *

  

("If you get yourself killed, Cecil, I swear I'll go to the Library and figure out how to resurrect you just so I can kill you again, do you hear me?" Carlos yells as he dodges another swipe from Night Vale's newest invader, narrowly avoiding breaking the syringe in his hand. He isn't sure when being a scientist began to involve defending your chosen town of residence from malevolent entities of every kind imaginable.

Then again, to be fair, it's not exactly in the job description of a radio broadcaster either.

"You're always so sentimental when you're worried, Carlos," answers the voice of Night Vale from somewhere behind him - and  _of course_  he doesn't even need to shout in the slightest, even with the enraged howls filling the air. "It's completely  _adorable_ , did I ever tell you that?"

"I've changed my mind. I'm going to strangle you whether we come out of this alive or not!" Carlos shouts back, and Cecil's laugh is the last thing he hears before there's a deafening explosion, and they lose each other in the chaos that ensues.)

 

Because near-death experiences are, ironical as it might sound, part of normal life, of _their_ life, it isn't all too rare for them to end up on the oversized couch in their apartment, Cecil dozing lightly, curled up against Carlos as he runs a hand through Cecil's hair, reassuring himself over and over again that the warm weight of Cecil is real and very much _there_ , that they are both still together and alive at the end of yet another day, give or take a couple hours.

More often, Carlos finds their positions reversed, because his thrice-damned scientific curiousity means that he's nearly always grabbing his equipment and heading directly _towards_ whatever paranormal activity has just descended upon Night Vale, in a truly impressive show of how far his self-preservation instincts have been eroded by the desert winds.

On nights like these, Carlos can't even scrounge up the energy to question the fact that the couch (approximately two-sevenths sentient by his last measurement) is changing shape to accomodate them better, or deny that his injuries hurt much less for it, not when he can feel the resonant tremor running through Cecil's usually confident and steady hands.

 

Sometimes - and it is becoming more and more frequent these days - neither of them is better off than the other. Stupidity shared is injury halved, after all.

Or at least that's what Cecil claims. Carlos can't help but find the idea dubious.

 

( _Don't ever do that again_ , they will say later, hands clutching and foreheads touching, when Night Vale is safe and all injuries have been tended to. And of course they will nod, and know that it will happen again whether they like it or not.) 

 

* * *

  

Carlos still isn't a fan of the radio; he doesn't think he'll ever be.

Cecil's voice, though, is another matter altogether.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! This fic very important to me for various reasons - not in the least because it's the longest one shot I've ever written - so I'd really appreciate it if you tell me what you think!
> 
> If it isn't already obvious, headcanon says the whole of Night Vale ships Carlos/Cecil, except for Steve Carlsberg, the jerk. (This includes - you guessed it - the Sheriff's Secret Police.)
> 
> And if it's at all relevant, my headcanon Cecil and Carlos are normal-looking and human, pretty much... ~~should I try writing in Cecil's POV sometime?~~
> 
> ETA: now with something of a companion fic in Cecil's POV [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941300)!


End file.
